Blockchain technology is becoming increasingly widespread due to its ability to provide transaction systems which are distributed, trustless, and capable of executing transactions in a transparent manner and establishing an unalterable record of all executed transactions. However, blockchain technology suffers from problems stemming from its fundamental design which cause poor performance, high latency, and high transaction costs, thereby severely limiting the scalability of the technology.
In a conventional blockchain network, transactions are written to new blocks which must be verified by every full node participating in the network through a chain of blocks which synchronizes all transactions sequentially. Therefore, the performance of the network, as defined by the number of transactions that the network can process during a set time interval, is strictly limited by the combination of the block size and the block creation time interval that enforces a global consensus on all transactions. Every full node must also maintain a complete copy of the continually expanding distributed ledger which records all transactions processed by the blockchain network. Furthermore, in proof-of-work blockchain networks, nodes are engaged in a resource intensive race to mine new blocks to add to the blockchain by means of solving a cryptographic puzzle which increases in difficulty as more blocks are added to the blockchain. This growing storage and computation requirement, combined with the ever-increasing processing power needed to generate new blocks, poses a significant barrier to participation by average users, which undermines the distributed and decentralized nature of the blockchain as fewer and fewer nodes are able to meet the processing and data storage requirements. Thus in addition to limiting scalability, this also degrades the security offered by a decentralized network as processing power is increasingly concentrated among a shrinking number of sufficiently powerful individual nodes or centrally controlled mining pools.
Certain alternative networks within the prior art seek to address the lack of scalability and performance penalties which characterize conventional blockchain networks. One prior art transaction network relies on a peer-to-peer network which dispenses with a blockchain consensus and verification and instead requires every participant making a transaction to verify two preceding transactions within a data structure organized as a chain of transactions before each transaction can be processed, theoretically creating a chain of honest transactions. However, this approach does not fully prevent double-spend attacks or race conditions whereby assets are accessed simultaneously across multiple transactions, nor does it employ robust verification of each transaction to prevent dishonest participants from overwhelming honest participants during a lull in transaction activity by honest participants. Other networks exist which instead depend on trusted parties acting as “notaries” or “delegates” to verify transactions, thereby creating a centralized network which completely abandons the benefits of a trustless, decentralized network.
A need therefore exists for a truly decentralized distributed transaction network capable of executing secure transactions while overcoming the deficiencies in scalability and performance of prior art blockchain networks while also avoiding the disadvantages of decreased security and increased centralization of alternative transaction networks found within the prior art.
In the present disclosure, where a document, act or item of knowledge is referred to or discussed, this reference or discussion is not an admission that the document, act or item of knowledge or any combination thereof was at the priority date, publicly available, known to the public, part of common general knowledge or otherwise constitutes prior art under the applicable statutory provisions; or is known to be relevant to an attempt to solve any problem with which the present disclosure is concerned.
While certain aspects of conventional technologies have been discussed to facilitate the present disclosure, no technical aspects are disclaimed and it is contemplated that the claims may encompass one or more of the conventional technical aspects discussed herein.